Tigers Burn Bright At Princeton

By Nancy Mattoon

Max Bolliger.
Der goldene Apfel: Eine Geschichte.
Illustrated by Celestino Piatti.
Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1970.
(All Images Courtesy Of Cotsen Children's Library.)

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake, 1794.

André Hellé. Grosse bêtes & petites bêtes.
Paris: Tolmer & Cie, ca. 1912.

According to The Cambridge Companion to William Blake (2003), The Tyger is "the most anthologized poem in English." And when the Animal Planet television network conducted a poll in 2004, asking viewers to name "their favorite animal," the tiger came out on top at 21%, beating out even man's best friend. (Dogs came in second at 20%.) Moreover, various species of tigers are the national animal for the countries of Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Malaysia, North Korea and South Korea. (Finally something both Korea's can agree on!) All of which proves the enormous tabby cat we call the tiger is a very popular fellow around the globe. That's one reason why Princeton University's Cotsen Children's Library devoted an exhibition to tigers as depicted in its historic picture book collection.

Samuil Marshak. Detki v kletke [Children in a Cage].
Illustrations by Evgenii Charushin.
3rd ed. Moscow: Detgiz, 1947.

Of course, Princeton University had another reason to celebrate Panthera tigris. Like the Detroit Major League baseball team, the English rugby club of Leicester, and the Louisiana State University football team, among many others, the Princeton athletic team mascot is the tiger. According to the Princeton Parent's Handbook, "Originally, Princeton's mascot was the lion—seen by the administration as the most regal animal. However, in 1867 the sophomore baseball team decided to adorn orange ribbons with black numerals. The orange and black combination stuck and by the early 1880s florid sports writers began to refer to Princeton's teams as the Tigers."

Book of Animals. Mounted on Linen.
Springfield, MA: McLoughlin Bros. Inc.,
[between 1920-1929?].

The adoption of the tiger as Princeton's mascot may have been accidental, but that hasn't made it any less beloved. In 2007, after over 125 years of having a nameless tiger symbolize their sporting excellence, Princeton's Athletic department sponsored an online contest to "Name The Tiger." The overwhelming response was: "Don't Name Princeton's Mascot." Students and faculty alike resented the fact that the naming contest took place over the summer, when most of them weren't even on campus. And a Facebook page was created to complain that "commercialization" of the mascot would be an unnecessary break with tradition. In the end, the nameless Princeton Tiger got a graphic "facelift" of its official logo, but remained, as always, unnamed.

Bentsyion Raskin. Di hun vas gevolt hobn a kam.
[The Hen Who Wanted a Comb].
Illustrated by El Lissitsky.
Kiev: Yidisher Folks-Farlag, 1919.


William Ralston and C.W. Cole.
Tippoo: A Tale of a Tiger etc., etc.
(Routledge's Shilling Toy Books 115)
London, New York: G. Routledge & Sons, [1886].

Princeton's Tiger may be forever nameless, but many named tigers have graced the pages of literature. In The Jungle Book (1894), Kipling's deadly Shere Khan got his name from a combination of the Urdu/Hindi name for "tiger "(shere) and that language's word for "king" (khan). At the other end of the spectrum from Kipling's menacing lord of the jungle, A.A. Milne created the ever-bouncing Tigger, one of the happiest creatures in Winnie The Pooh's hundred acre wood, in 1928. And more recently, the Man Booker Prize-winning, Life of Pi (2001) by Yann Martel featured a tiger stranded on the Pacific Ocean named "Richard Parker." That name, in turn, came from a novel by Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative Of Gordon Pym (1838), which featured a dog named "Tiger," and a mutinous sailor named "Richard Parker."

Harry B. Neilson, author-illustrator. An Animal A B C.
London, Glasgow, Bombay: Blackie and Son Ltd., 1901.

Popular culture hasn't shied away from the majestic tiger, either. The bookish, artistic, and conscientious, Hobbes the tiger makes up the smarter half of the comic strip duo of Calvin and Hobbes. In a much darker cartoon depiction of the tiger, famed political cartoonist Thomas Nast used the big cat to symbolize the evil political machine known as "Tammany Hall." Nast notoriously depicted the corrupt "Tammany Tiger" devouring American democracy. Back on the lighter side is Kellogg's famous "Tony The Tiger." Tony apparently thrives on sugared corn flakes, making him the world's only vegetarian tiger.

Qi hu yongshi: yi zu min jian chuan ji
[Brave Tiger Rider: I Tribe Folk Tales].
Illustrated by Qinchu Guo.
Shanghai: Shao nian er tong chu ban she, 1963.

The ubiquity of the tiger as an image of beauty, strength, and majesty makes it easy to forget that this magnificent, striped cat is a highly endangered species. According to the website Big Cat Rescue, "Tiger numbers in the wild are thought to have plunged from 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to between 1,500 and 3,500 today (2009)." There are now more tigers in captivity than living in their natural habitat. The tiger has become a worldwide symbol of conservation, and one can only hope its popularity with its greatest enemy, man, will allow this amazing creature to escape extinction.
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Coloring Books Go Highbrow At Princeton Library

By Nancy Mattoon

PARAIN, Nathalie. Ribambelles [Paper Chains].
Paris: Flammarion, 1932.
(All Images Courtesy Of Cotsen Children's Library, Princeton University.)

A craft book for ages five to twelve with instructions for accordion-folding paper, and designs to trace and cut around. The paper chains are used to decorate table settings and other objects. Natalie Parain was one of the first Russian artists employed by Paul Faucher, and illustrated a dozen books in the Pere Castor series.

Children's literature in general doesn't get much respect from academia and university libraries. But the true "Rodney Dangerfield" of kid's books--even lower than the lowest of low-brow comic books--has got to be activity books. Coloring books, puzzle books, dot-to-dot books, and paper doll books are basically paper-bound Highlights magazines, minus Goofus and Gallant. Meant to be written in, cut up, and thrown away, they are probably the most inherently disposable books ever printed. But even these pedestrian tomes can become high art in the right hands, and Princeton University's Cotsen Children's Library has created an online exhibition of rare books to prove it.

ROJANKOVSKY, Feodor?
Detail from rear cover of : Je fais mes jouets avec des plantes
[I Make My Toys with Plants].
Paris: Flammarion, 1934.

Two examples of the use of the Pere Castor logo. Feodor Rojankovsky was well known as an illustrator of children's books and also as an erotic illustrator.

LALOUVE WOLFF, Kate.
Title page vignette from: Le beau jeu des vitraux
[The Great Game of Stained Glass Windows].
Paris: Flammarion, 1934.

Wolff was a Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and later emigrated to the United States.

In 1931, French author and educator Paul Faucher (1898-1967) took on the pen name Pere Castor (Father Beaver) to write and produce a series of "albums" for children. The intention of the Albums Du Pere Castor was to stimulate a child's imagination and creativity. Craft projects featuring high quality artwork which enhanced hand eye-coordination were the hallmark of the series, published by Flammarion, the well-known producer of the Tintin books. Faucher believed that "creative play with highly stylized or abstract forms, colored paper, paste, and scissors" could promote self-expression, cooperation, and "communicate human values." The busy and industrious beaver, associated with the construction of dams and lodges, was chosen as the mascot of the series, and appeared in a wide variety of logos throughout the albums.

COLMONT, Marie.
Panorama du fleuve [Panorama of a River].
Illustrated by Alexandra Exter.
Paris: Flammarion, c1937.

Alexandra Exter was an avant-garde painter and theatrical designer. The Panorama du fleuve–nearly six feet long when opened out– was published in English translation reformatted as a conventional picture book, instead of in the original accordion-folded strips with text on one side and illustrations on the other.

Panorama's First Double Page Spread.

Faucher chose the perfect moment to begin such an ambitious project. Paris was the refuge for a large number of avant-garde artists who had fled the Soviet Union when the government decreed that the only acceptable art style was Socialist Realism. Unwilling to restrict their work to pieces which faithfully educated "workers in the spirit of socialism," these progressive artists were forced to reestablish their careers in France. In order to create portfolios of published art, they worked cheap.Their need for quick visibility in the public eye meant Faucher could afford to employ artists of a much higher quality than would normally be willing to work on a series of children's activity books.

BELVES, Pierre.
Back cover of: Les métiers en images lumineuses
[The Trades in Illuminated Pictures].
Paris: Flammarion, 1953.

The child is instructed to cut away the white space in the picture and fill in the cut-outs with pieces of colored paper. The completed picture can be pasted on a window to create the effect of stained glass. The back cover shows all the outlines colored in as samples. Pierre Belvès created seven "stained glass" books on different subjects for the Albums Du Pere Castor series.

The Outline Of "The Miner."

Faucher was a forward thinking educator, and the innovative Russian artists were a perfect match for his theories of l'Education Nouvelle. Faucher stressed that education must enhance the child's natural spirit of exploration and imagination, and that artistic and physical skills were as important as book learning. His perfect blend of sound education theory and magnificent artwork led to the Pere Castor series being recognized almost immediately as worthy of serious attention and study.

LEBLONDE, Victorine.
Animaux domestiques articulés: Découpage et montage sans collage.
[Articulated Domestic Animals: Cutting and Assembly Without Glue].
Paris: Flammarion, 1941.

The child cuts and folds paper pieces for assembly into 3D animals. The instructions are surrounded by a border of the completed figures. The paper cut-outs are stabilized with matchsticks, making this the perfect project for budding firebugs. (Young glue sniffers must look elsewhere...)

Pieces to create the chickens and the donkey.

But more importantly to Faucher, the albums were tremendously popular with kids. And because they were published as low cost pamphlets, they were affordable even for children whose parents couldn't buy them hardcover books. The result was that cheap, inherently ephemeral publications wound up being, according to the Cotsen exhibition,"some of the most striking and influential Modernist books for children of the last century." In their pristine state, untouched by the grubby little hands they were meant to entertain and educate, the Albums Du Pere Castor are also extremely rare.
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